Every brand needs an anthem. Most settle for a humdrum mission statement or competitive benchmark instead.

In my recent “Brand Laddering” cartoon, I parodied brands that stretch too far beyond believability, trying to make corn chips stand for world peace. I think there’s just as much to make fun of with brands that don’t try to stand for anything at all.

Too often we define our brands only by how we stack up versus our competition. The Fast Food market works this way. Brands typically pivot off of each other, claiming Cheaper, Bigger, Tastier, etc. Taco Bell asked consumers to Think Outside the Bun. Quiznos introduced Toasty as a point of difference versus Subway.

Chipotle traditionally marketed like every other Fast Food restaurant, with billboard ads like this one focused on big burritos.Yet Chipotle made waves at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity a couple weeks ago with the following anthem called “Back to the Start”. In a simple animation voiced by Willy Nelson, Chipotle elevated their ingredient sourcing story to a rally cry on how our culture sources food as a whole.PopoutHaving an anthem inspires, not only our consumers, but everyone on our extended teams who touch the brand.

A true anthem tells a true story of true meaning. That is what most brands, corporations, businesses lack. Meaning. A vision of doing things, a vision of value. Bigger than life. More important than every single employee's vision. Uniting employees and consumers ...

Too good to be true. Worthwhile working on.)

Tom is cartoonist and founder of Marketoonist, helping organizations communicate with cartoons. He draws from 16yrs of marketing, most recently as Marketing VP at method. He speaks about innovation, creativity, and marketing, using cartoons to visualize. @tomfishburne

The 140 Characters conference is a downright hugfest, as founder Jeff Pulver insists on giving physical hugs to the speakers and virtual hugs to the audience. The virtual hugs come in the form of carefully chosen speakers whose unique stories inspire, cajole and even move the audience to tears. Here is a recap of day one excluding five stories I included in my MediaPost article today.

When the mobile and social web combine they create the basis for a completely new Internet. Which radically differentiates itself from the shape of the current one.

Why is the mobile social Internet different from the old Internet?The history of technology is not what we assume. Progress does not follow a straight line. It is pushed sideways through seemingly random collisions between existing and familiar technologies – with the result being something radically different.

To my best interpretation this is what is happening now: The first generation Internet was/is a one dimensional information web, and we have unsuccessfully tried to build bigger ideas on top of it. Now, the mobile social web is shaping up to be a much better infrastructure to build new ideas in.

The mobile social web is our secret sauce.(We just have to stop thinking of it as: 1. A smaller version of the Internet and 2. Facebook)

It has always been about culture!yes, it has. But we are now given a front door access to the other side of the purchase, so that we can participate and even parttake in designing the culture around our products. And we need to start bringing more of the direct experience of culture back into the sale and retail experiences.

(ralf says:Signed ;)

Helge works as Digital Director for Dinamo, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. Twitter: @congbo

“Brand Laddering” is one of the most common marketing tools. To drive growth and loyalty, marketers frequently work to elevate benefits of the brand from technical to functional to emotional.

But there’s a risk of over-reaching, particularly when brands aim for abstract emotional benefits not really supported by the product story. Brandgym founder David Taylor calls this phenomenon “brand ego tripping”.

I imagine our current situation will cause future generations to shudder at the thoughtlessness in the way in which we today fill our homes, our cities, and our landscape with a chaos of assorted junk. What a fatalistic apathy we have towards the effect of such things. What atrocities we have to tolerate. Yet we are only half aware of them.

This complex situation is increasing and possibly irreversible: there are no discrete actions anymore. Everything interacts and is dependent on other things; we must think more thoroughly about what we are doing, how we are doing it and why we are doing it.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

"MAKIES is an action doll creator: a player/customer can design their own action doll – features, hair, clothes and everything – & we then 3D print it uniquely to them, build & dress it, and send on to them within 3 weeks of ordering."

Might this be engaging for your brand? Doubt it.But what about all those worldwide toilet paper brands?

Why didn't they come up with that idea? They have issues with tabooing the product. They could have created some buzz. Could have made it easier to talk about the product. Get a more modern, cool image for the brand ... or? Connect the virtual and real world via a funny and viral bridge, I suppose.